This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

“The average level of cosplay is not as good as the average level of drag,” says the co-founder of the Toronto Comics Arts Festival. “Straight up. We were at Anime North and there were drag queens there. And I was like, thank you. You are showing these kids how it’s done.”

Cosplay is the activity of dressing up like your favourite fictional characters. If you read any coverage of Toronto’s Fan Expo convention, it was likely a photo gallery of people dressed in homemade Wonder Woman and Boba Fett costumes.

“They cover comic cons like they cover the gay pride parade,” says Butcher, still working on the corn and chili soup as I set down plates of the rapini pesto potato salad. I didn’t have much of a theme for the meal, just no meat, since Butcher’s husband, Andrew, has gone from being a picky eater to vegetarian.

“You said con,” says the festival’s managing director, Miles Baker.

Article Continued Below

“I think the library part of the festival is a convention,” admits Butcher. “And there’s no way to get around it, unfortunately.”

The vendor fair at the Toronto Reference Library, on May 9 and 10, marks the end of a week of readings, panel discussions, workshops and gallery shows. But it’s not a comic convention, not like the one I went to when I was 14, where I got autographs from Walter Koenig and Todd McFarlane.

“It’s tricky,” says Baker. “The difference between a convention and a festival is hard to determine.”

I’ll take a shot at it. A convention is for people who are already involved in a thing, whether its comics or plumbing. A festival is for everyone. So the defining characteristic of TCAF as a festival is that it’s free.

And not that anybody has anything against superheroes — or the decades out of date bromide that “comics aren’t just for kids anymore” — but TCAF is about promoting comics as a medium.

“We do get the odd, hard-core superhero fan,” says co-founder Peter Birkemoe, adding that they do have superhero stuff, but that TCAF reverses the usual comic scene ratio of unique, creator-driven material to the sea of Marvel and DC. “It is very satisfying for me to force people to reconsider where their stuff sits, that comics is a bigger thing than they look at.”

Birkemoe’s girlfriend got sick and couldn’t make it. But he brings the polenta cake she made. Believing he’s contagious, he instructs Butcher to mix orange zest with yogurt for garnish. It’s a very good cake.

“I really believe in comics as an idea,” says Butcher, “as an amazing way to communicate stories to people.”

Friends still ask me why I like comics, as if I could give a satisfying answer to such a bizarre question. It’s like asking, why do you like music?

“Some people really hate subtitled movies,” Butcher expands. “Because they don’t like what it does to their brain when they’re reading and watching something at the same time. But comics, it’s the exact inverse of that. Everything’s firing in our left brain and right brain.”

There’s no ticking clock in comics, the way you have with subtitled movies (or at the opera), where each time you read the text, you’re looking away from the art, from the visually designed experience. With comics, you control that pace. The reader always has the choice to linger over each image.

“You can reread a passage in a novel. But it’s sequential in a way that a panel in a comic isn’t,” says Butcher. “In a comic panel, the words and text are happening at the same time and also depicting the passage of time. So nerdy to say it out loud.”

Comics offer such a controlled experience to the audience. I remember the breakthrough, realizing that I didn’t need to read a comic (or “graphic novel” as you may call them) as quickly as I could process the words, like going through an art gallery on a conveyor belt.

I’ve known Butcher for a decade now. He’s always recommending comics. When he pushed 3” on me, a French comic that follows a beam of light through a wordless narrative, I wondered what I would have made of it back when I first started reading X-Men. Would my little brain have taken the challenge to connect the images and direction between panels?

When I was a kid, I used to flip through every comic when I bought it, before reading. I don’t know why I did that. Eventually I developed a ritual of covering the right page to prevent spoiling the next scene. After that I started picking out music to set the tone, and of course food, soup being the ideal snack because you don’t want to have to look away from the page but you also don’t want sticky fingers.

“You mention the speed with which you absorb this. That’s exactly how I relate to the superhero movies,” says Birkemoe. “Because I only watch those at home where I can fast-forward through the fight scenes. I don’t think I could consume those in the theatre, without the remote control.”

I like a simple cake you can eat with a cup of coffee, something that doesn’t make your teeth jitter. Minus a garnish of cream and fruit, this is that cake. It’s adapted from a Nigella Lawson recipe and pretty much a sweet cornbread.

1 cup + 2 tbsp (280 mL) butter, unsalted

1 cup (250 mL) cornmeal

9 tbsp (140 mL) sugar

4 eggs

¼ cup (60 mL) yogurt

zest of 4 oranges

juice of ½ orange

1/3 cup (80 mL) all purpose flour

1½ tsp (7 mL) baking powder

Preheat oven to 350F/180C.

Butter a 9-inch springform pan and line it with parchment paper. Shake a little cornmeal into the pan, letting it stick to the sides.

In a kitchen mixer with whisk attachment, cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, then yogurt, zest and orange juice. Add cornmeal, flour and baking powder. Pour into pan and bake until top is golden, about 40 minutes. Allow to cool before releasing from pan.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com